MANAGING CHANGE

Managing Change



Table of Contents

Introduction2

Discussion and Analysis3

Organizational Information and Scenario:4

Project Feasibility Study:6

Managing organisational change:6

Implementing innovations:8

Individual responses to change:9

Conclusion11

References13

Managing Change

Introduction

In the academic literature on organizational change, a distinction is often made between change through adaptation and through selection and between the transformation and evolution of organizations. To a large extent, the perspectives on change being employed reflect the various theoretical positions for the study of organizations in general. Most students of organizational change examine how individual organizations adapt in response to changing circumstances, but these adaptations may take different forms. For example, contingency theory focuses on the alignment between various situational features (e.g., technical environment) and structural features (e.g., horizontal and vertical specialization). Thus, organizational change is expected if changes in the technical environments imply a misalignment with organizational structure. Rational adaptation is also emphasized in purposeful action approaches where organizations are seen as having some capacity to handle their dependency on environments or even change the environments. Moreover, approaches that emphasize the importance of institutional environments focus on how organizations adapt their structures to prevailing normatively endorsed modes of organizing. This also leads to a large extent of isomorphism in an organizational field. On the other hand, there may be a decoupling between organizational structures and organizational activities, where changes in organizational structures reflect the myths embedded in the institutional environments and are not meant to affect organizational activities. This paper presents a Project Feasibility Study (PFS) that assesses how a given problem can be addressed through an organisational change process in an organization.

Discussion and Analysis

Change management is a generic process applicable to all kinds of organizations, which uses knowledge and skills to bring about substantial organizational change to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Change may be required due to an outdated organizational structure, poor responsiveness to clients, technological change, a merger, or an inappropriate organizational culture. In most cases, a combination of several factors is involved.

While change now concerns most managers, it is only in the last decade that change management has become a distinct subfield of general management, joining project management, operations management, and services management. It now has its own research and theoretical literature, professional bodies, and record of successes and failures.

Change management programme is a plan and process to implement and manage change within an organization. Change results in new roles for individuals and new business practices for groups within the organization, e.g. project-based cross-functional teams might replace functional units. It is recognized that this can be stressful, may cause anxiety and lower employee morale. Therefore, organizations will try to plan and manage change through the use of special programmes and change agents, i.e. people who can serve as catalysts for change and take on responsibility for managing it.

The pressure to change comes from many factors external to the organization, e.g. technology, competition, economic shocks and social trends. It also comes from the business sector itself, e.g. from investor demands and the desire to make managers more accountable, both of which tend to focus attention on ...